WINTER 2010

Phoenix Mountain Tea comes from a repeated winner of local tea competitions over the past few decades. This batch is a medium-dark roast - giving it a character akin to dried apricots and sunny late autumn days. It has a pungent, tangy sweetness with just enough astringency to make it a fine tea. And we continue to discover how this more oxidized and roasted type of tea is most easily digested - with mellowed bitter qualities and a softer stimulative effect. Start out with less leaves and increase them as you see fit to achieve the prime brew. There are varying qualities with different concentrations. Explore.

Classic Dong Ding Oolong Tea

This winter's Classic Dong Ding is a distinctly balanced brew. Its flavor is sublte and has a sweetness like that of baked butternut squash combined with the oolong signature of an underlying trace of bitter to give it a clean lasting finish.

As I sit and ponder a new way of comprehensively describing my personal all-time favorite type of tea, I come up with the following: Dong Ding Oolong is at the center of the vast spectrum of tea varieties. Hence, it possesses the broadest range of flavor and qualities of any tea that I’ve experienced. It has the rich, dark, roasty qualities of fine black teas as well as the flavorful, aromatic qualities of green teas. In this sense it is magic. In venturing to make an analogy between two very different beverages, I put forth that Dong Ding is to tea what fine scotch is to spirits. I will simply leave it at that.